The Runaway (1926 film)

The Runaway
Lobby card
Directed by	William C. deMille
Written by	Albert Shelby Le Vino
Based on	The Flight to the Hills by Charles Neville Buck
Produced by	Famous Players–Lasky
Starring	Clara Bow Warner Baxter William Powell George Bancroft
Cinematography	Charles P. Boyle
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	April 5, 1926 (1926-04-05)
Running time	69 minutes
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

The Runaway is a 1926 American silent melodrama film directed by William C. deMille and starring Clara Bow, Warner Baxter, William Powell, and George Bancroft. The cinematography was by Charles P. Boyle. The plot involves a movie star who erroneously assumes that she has murdered someone and flees to Kentucky.

Plot

Cynthia Meade (Clara Bow), a wild, high spirited New York movie actress, meets Jack Harrison (William Powell), a wealthy young New Yorker, in a Tennessee city. She is hoping he will be able to help her with her movie career, but he demands a relationship in return. A stray bullet comes through the window and he is dangerously wounded while with Cynthia. Realizes how hard it will be to prove her innocence, Cynthea flees, thinking Harrison dead. On a lonely road, Cynthia, half hysterical and nearly exhausted, appeals to Wade Murrell (Warner Baxter), a young mountaineer on the way back to his Kentucky home. He believes that she is running away from danger and takes her with him. Arriving at his house, he is disgusted when he learns she cannot cook or do any of the daily chores of hill women. However, she finally wins the confidence of his mother (Edythe Chapman). Several weeks later, Harrison, the supposedly dead man, appears, saying he is seeking the person who shot and left him for dead. Murrell does not know at first that Cynthia is the person Harrison suspects, and the two become good friends. The presence of a “painted woman,” as the hill people call Cynthia, arouses a terrific antipathy toward Murrell, and he narrowly avoids being killed by one of their number. In the end, Cynthia is forced to choose between her old and new lover, but not before the three have passed through many crises.

Cast

• Clara Bow as Cynthia Meade
• Warner Baxter as Wade Murrell
• William Powell as Jack Harrison
• George Bancroft as Lesher Skidmore
• Edythe Chapman as Mrs. Murrell

Preservation

With no prints of The Runaway located in any film archives, it is a lost film.

External links

• The Runaway at IMDb
• Synopsis at AllMovie
• Lobby card
• Lobby poster
• The Runaway (1926) on YouTube (34 second film segment)